Avenue McGill College in winter from Place Ville Marie near the Bonaventure Hilton

DAY ONE: BIENVENUE À MONTRÉAL, OLD MONTRÉAL, QUARTIER LATIN, UQAM

Welcome to Montréal, the second largest French-speaking city in the world.

Arrive at Gare Centrale in the late afternoon, meet your VISIT QUÉBEC guide, then transfer or take the Metro to your hotel at the edge of Montréal’s colorful Latin Quarter.

Begin your Montréal visit with a walking orientation tour of Vieux Montreal ending at a colorful French-Canadian sports restaurant (with a predictable bias toward the Montréal Canadiens) where you’ll have dinner in an old building filled with every conceivable piece of sports paraphernalia in every imaginable place..

After dinner, you will return by subway to the Latin Quarter, where your guide will lead you on a short walking tour of rue St-Denis and the University of Québec at Montréal (UQAM) before escorting you back to your hotel.

DAY TWO: NÔTRE DAME, ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM, CENTRE iSci, ICE SKATING

Take the Metro to breakfast in the heart of Old Montréal at a trendy new bistro-style café that has become quite popular for it’s imaginative breakfast menu (a muffin explosion) and eclectic architecture and décor.

After breakfast, walk first to nearby Nôtre Dame Basilica, the jewel of Montréal (pictured at left) for a tour of the most beautiful church in all the Americas.

Walk next to the beautiful Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire de Montréal, the newest museum with the oldest artifacts in the city. There, after a 15-minute multi-media presentation about the history of the City, you will descend into its 350-year-old ruins to the very birthplace of Montréal.

After your tour, you can walk back to Place Jacques Cartier for lunch on your own in one of its sidewalk cafés, or at the food court on the nearby King Edward Pier, then you’ll be free for the early afternoon to explore the centuries-old cobblestoned streets and greystone buildings and the open-air artists stalls (once frequented by Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin both who lived nearby).

Your afternoon will end with a visit to the new Montreal Interactive Science Center on the King Edward Pier where you can, among other things, program a robot, look at an electronic chip, design a bicycle helmet, manage a forest, diagnose a disease or produce a web page in the iSci multiple interactive exhibits.

You’ll take the Metro to dinner this evening inside historic Gare Windsor (the oldest of North America’s metropolitan railway stations).

After dinner, walk next door to an architecturally acclaimed office building in the heart of downtown Montréal and spend the evening ice skating at l'Amphithéâtre de Glace, a 10,000 square foot ice-skating pavilion “without equal in North America”.

Return to your hotel on the subway. Overnight security services begin at the hotel at 10:00pm.

DAY THREE: BIODÔME, MONTRÉAL UNDERGROUND, ICE SKATING

Breakfast in the hotel dining room, then walk across the street and board the Métro for a short ride to the Biodôme de Montréal.

During your visit there, you will pass through the four major natural environments found in South, Central, and North America and at the North and South Poles, where 4000 animals from 200 species reside. You’ll see penguins, parrots, puffins and piranhas, beavers, bats, and ducks, alligators, otters, and monkeys, and a hundred others.

Next, you will ascend on the funiculaire (the elevator cab about half way up the tower in the photo at right) to the top of the world's tallest inclined tower for a panoramic, 50-mile view of Montréal, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the surrounding countryside. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

Return to sea level, then take the Métro to Place Montréal Trust, “le coeur de Montréal,” where, after lunch on your own, you will descend into the heart of Montréal’s vast Underground City.

There, you can spend the late afternoon practicing your French while exploring and souvenir-shopping in “la Ville Souterraine,” a 30-kilometer network of underground shops and passageways.

This evening, you will take the Métro to colorful Crescent Street for dinner at the Hard Rock Café Montréal then return by Métro to the Latin Quarter for interactive “Secrets of Animation” workshop (in French or English or FSL).

During the workshop, you and your classmates will create and shoot a short film that you will watch on a large screen before you leave. The film will be converted to a Windows Media File and emailed to your group leader, who can forward it to you when you get home.

After the workshop, walk a block back to the hotel. Overnight security begins at 10:30pm.

DAY FOUR: BREAKFAST, VIA RAIL OR AMTRAK, AU REVOIR

Full Canadian breakfast in the hotel, then bring your bags to the lobby and depart for Gare Centrale by Métro. Check in with VIA RAIL or AMTRAK and begin your train ride home.

Au revoir, Montréal. À bientôt